Yes, my blog. I am a poet, a writer, an educator, a scholar, going rogue when necessary. Over time this blog has turned into the place where I track and keep up with my publications, books, reviews, awards, readings, launches, interviews, and things of interest that I might want to think about in a public space. In that respect it is more comprehensive than any piece of paper or resume I have. I actually use it to update my resume.

How this blog began?

:the philosophic and poetic of it:

Strange Places is about words and the places they take us. About poetry. The places it comes from and the power it has to create and re-invent us. About metaphor, and images, and thought expressed. It is about bringing poetry and philosophy back together. Also inevitably about the institutions that hold worlds and words prisoners, and with them our imagination. Or as most amazingly the case can be sometimes release them into the human imagination.

The words “strange places” came up in a conversation with friends, and all of a sudden I knew that was the name of the blog that I have been contemplating. Strange? That is part of the mystery. Words take us to strange places in which we discover the strange places we are. Where we become more familiar with ourselves, get to know each other better, on a journey that gathers its own weight, discovery and surprise. Ultimately, I hope, a place that is not so strange, after all.

hello! So glad I found you again. I have been thinking about reconnecting with you for two years. I keep remembering your poem about Bulgaria….I want to read that again. And SO great to read your blog!!

Hi, Daniela: Thanks so much for The Book of It. And so interesting to see how well it connected to your stories on early childhood education during dinner at David’s. I loved being a part of the Roaming Poets day. Hope you come to the Island again soon.

Oh, Charles,
Thank you so much. Just got back from the dinner. Off to the convocation tomorrow.
You were an important anchor the last couple of years at SFU, for which I thank you. You deserve a special award too, Both for your work and for the support you were/are to others.
Lets get together sometime soon.

I work for Living Oceans. We are currently collecting images of individuals from BC (and everywhere else) who are opposed to the Harper government’s proposals to pipe Alberta tar sands oil through pristine wilderness to load onto tankers which will traverse the pristine waters of our coastline. The images will be loaded onto our Keep It Clean map (http://www.livingoceans.org/maps/keep-it-clean).

I found out about the Enpipe Line project and am contacting contributors in the hope that you will agree to submit a photo for inclusion on the map. You can do this yourself via our site (link above) or by sending it to me with a note acknowledging that you have read and agree to our terms of use.

All photos of contributors will have a link to the Enpipe Line page on Creekstone’s website, so we can help to promote the project.

The one piece of information we need (in addition to your name) is your home post code so that your image can be accurately sited on the map.

I hope you’ll want to get involved and look forward to hearing from you.

Dear Daniela: I just came across your website while reading bios at The League of Canadian Poets. I’d like to invite you to submit work for a book I’m co-editing (a book of ekphrastic poems based on images I took during the Iraq War). I’m listing the text for the guidelines below, but to see the images, you’d need to download the PDF:

Image Poem Iraq is a book project conceived by Joel Preston Smith, a writer and photographer in Portland, Oregon, and Mary Bast, a poet in Gainesville, Florida. The book will ‘match’ images taken by Joel Preston Smith in Iraq in 2003 (before and after the U.S. invasion) with poems related to specific images that will appear in the book.
To submit a poem, first view the images in this PDF, and chose one or more to write about. Each poem should be related to a specific image (see the submission example on the right). Submissions are due on or by November 1, 2013. Poets can contribute more than one poem, but the project centers on publishing a book in which each poem (or a series of poems by multiple contributors) is strongly related to one particular image.
Poems do NOT have to be about war, or Iraq, or any of the ‘obvious’ themes that might be perceived in the images. We, as editors, hope to see poems that do have a discernible connection to the images, but the poems don’t have to reference the images in some kind of ‘direct’ manner.

Titling, etc.: Please title your poem, and note which page of the PDF your poem relates to (you might also want to describe the image—just to be sure). Those details should be included as a footnote (in essence) to the poem—meaning beneath the poem (you don’t have to use superscript or otherwise set off the footnote). Please include both your poem(s) and page number in your submission (the page of the PDF on which the image occurs that inspired your poem). Make it easy for us (please) to know which image you are writing about. Lastly, include your contact info (your email address).

Feel free to forward these guidelines to anyone you believe might be interested in contributing poetry.
Line length: 64 is the maximum number of lines we will publish (but we prefer 32 or less) for a given poem. The book will likely be ‘chapbook’ sized—roughly 5.5 x 8.5 inches, and will include the photographs related to the poems we’ve chosen for publication.
Format: Format your poem according to how you wish it to be seen. Ideally, you should send poems in rich text format (RTF files), as Word documents DOC files), or OpenOffice documents (ODT files).

Production: By Oct. 1, we plan to have finished selections for the book and will notify submitters if their poems have been accepted or deemed not a match. By Nov. 1 we (ideally) will have a completed design, and can begin approaching publishers. Payment for submissions will be, at a minimum, in digital editions. If proceeds exceed $1000, we will issue payments dependent on projected revenue.

Book title: The title will likely be chosen from a phrase from one of the accepted poems. Until then, it’s just Image Poem Iraq.
Where to send your submissions

Thank you Leanne, great to have you at the workshop. So glad you found it inspiring and useful. The participation of the attendees made it fun and a good success.
Thank you for your thoughts. I left a comment on your blog but not sure if I managed to post it. Tried three times.
Hope I succeeded. :-)
best
daniela

[…] by invited literary figures including a Canadia Playwright, John John MacLachlan Gray and a poet Daniela Elza, and mostly celebrating the wonderful Irish author James Joyce and his most famous publication […]